A look at old and new Scottish literature as independence support surges
The Four Maries
Yestreen the Queen had four Maries, the nicht she’ll hae but three
There was Mary Seaton, and Mary Beaton and Mary Carmichael and me.
Word’s gone through the kitchen, and word’s gone through the ha, That Mary Hamilton has a wean by the highest Stuart of aa.
As she gae’d up the Canongate, a loud loud laugh gied she,
But as she gaed doon the Canongate the saut tear blinded her ee.
“Oh, oftimes hae I dressed my Queen, and pit gold in her hair, But noo I’ve gotten for my reward the gallows to be my share.
Little did my mither think the day she cradled me,
The lands I was tae travel in, the death I was tae dee.”
- Traditional A Red, Red Rose
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve’s like the melodie That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry:
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun: I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only Luve And fare thee weel, awhile!
And I will come again, my Luve, Tho’ it were ten thousand mile
- Robert Burns Mrs Quasimodo
I’d loved them fervently since childhood.
Their generous bronze throats
Gargling, then chasanting slowly, calming me –
The village runt, name-called, stunted, lame, hair-lipped; but bearing up, despite it all, sweet-tempered, good at needlework; an ugly cliché in a field, pressing dock-leaves to her fast, stung calves and listening to the five cool bells of evensong.
I believed that they could even make it rain.
The city suited me; my lumpy shadow lurching on its jagged alley walls; my small eyes black as rained-on cobblestones.
I frightened cats.
I lived alone up seven flights, boiled potatoes on a ring and fried a single silver fish; then stared across the grey lead roofs as dusk’s blue rubber rubbed them out. And then the bells began.
I climbed the belltower steps, out of breath and sweating anxiously, puce-faced, and found the campanologists beneath their ropes. They made a space for me, telling their names, and when it came to him
I felt a thump of confidence, a recognition like a struck match in my head,
It was Christmas time
When the others left,
… underneath the gaping, stricken bells until I wept
We wed.
He swung an epithalamium for me,
Robert Burns
embossed it on the fragrant air.
Long, sexy chimes, exuberant peals,
Slow scales trailing up and down the smaller bells, an angelus.
We had no honeymoon, but spent the week in bed. and did I kiss each part of him
… or not?
So more fool me.
We lived in the cathedral grounds.
The bellringer.
The hunchback’s wife.
(The Quasimodos. Have you met them? Gross.) And got a life; our neighbours – sullen gargoyles, cowled
Saints who raised their marble hands in greeting as I passed along the gravel paths, my husband’s supper on a tray beneath a cloth. But once, one evening in the lady chapel on my own,
I kissed the cold lips of a Queen next to her King.
Something had changed, or never even been.
Soon enough,
He started to find fault.
Why did I this?
How could I that?
Look at myself.
And in that summer’s dregs,
I’d see him watch the pin-up gypsy posing with the tourists in the square; then turn his discontented mulish’s eye on me with no more love than stone.
I should have known.
Because it’s better, isn’t it, to be well formed. Better to be slim, be slight,